BB Grey–musings

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for my son, who flew toward his own sun

It’s always been a sin, hasn’t it?
To want too much.
To hope.
To leave.
To stay.

The days with you—
man once a boy
waiting for eggs I’d scramble
like penance,
as the toaster hummed its tired absolution,
those mornings are rosaries now,
threadbare prayers
slipping through guilty hands.

You make your own breakfast
in a city with better lighting.
Atlanta, I think.
I never did learn the shape of that skyline,
just the sound of your voice
shrinking through satellite static,
half song, half signal lost.

Back then,
I held you like a secret
no one warned me how to keep.
Dropped you too many times
in the name of strength.
Fathers sin quietly,
and call it sacrifice.

Your laugh—still mine.
Your anger—still hers.
We’re dominoes of old DNA
toppling through generations
with no clean break.
Russian dolls
of rage and redemption.
A bloodline of flame.

You said at the beach,
the strong eat the weak,
and meant it.
The tide took your shadow that day,
but not your grief.
It returned with the sea glass,
cut-glass truths from
the wreckage of softer lies.

You,
arms wide in the arms of the ocean,
young again,
still half-myth.
Kelp like wings.
Sand like currency.
Barnacles clinging to the part of you
still trying to stay.
You bought the lie.
I sold the silence.
We were both bankrupt
long before we knew
what love was supposed to cost.

You left to learn.
And I,
I stayed behind
with my lessons half-done,
watching your eyes grow
into something sadder than survival.

Come Christmas,
I’ll hang lights on a tree
already dead,
pretend the glow
is not delayed radiation
from the fallout
of our holy war.
I’ll smile through the smoke,
wrap my guilt in gold foil,
leave it under the tree
like a father’s last confession.

You’ll call from your rented future—
voice breaking like vinyl,
like prayer,
and I’ll sit in this borrowed life,
a cave shaped like memory,
humming the chorus:

Everything I’ve ever done,
Everything I ever do—
still ends in you.

And we’ll agree,
as always,
that the world is ending,
so beautifully.

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